Photo-Finish

‘Hullo, Rory,’ he said. ‘Morning to you. Morning. Troy well? Good.’ (Alleyn had not had time to answer.) ‘Sit down. Sit down. Yes.’

Alleyn sat down. ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’ he suggested.

‘It’s nothing much, really. Read the morning papers?’

‘The Times.’

‘Seen last Friday’s Mercury?’

‘No.’

‘I just wondered. That silly stuff with the press photographer and the Italian singing woman. What’s-her-name?’

After a moment’s pause Alleyn said woodenly: ‘Isabella Sommita.’

‘That’s the one,’ agreed the AC, one of whose foibles it was to pretend not to remember names. ‘Silly of me. Chap’s been at it again.’

‘Very persistent.’

‘Australia. Sydney or somewhere. Opera House, isn’t it?’

‘There is one: yes.’

‘On the steps at some sort of function. Here you are.’

He pushed over the newspaper folded to expose the photograph. It had indeed been taken a week ago on the steps of the magnificent Sydney Opera House on a summer’s evening. La Sommita, gloved in what seemed to be cloth of gold topped by a tiara, stood among VIPs of the highest calibre. Clearly she was not yet poised for the shot. The cameraman had jumped the gun. Again, her mouth was wide open but on this occasion she appeared to be screaming at the Governor General of Australia. Or perhaps shrieking with derisive laughter. There is a belief held by people of the theatre that nobody over the age of twenty-five should allow themselves to be photographed from below. Here, the camera had evidently been half a flight beneath the diva who therefore appeared to be richly endowed with chins and more than slight embonpoint. The Governor General, by some momentary accident, seemed to regard her with incredulity and loathing.

A banner headline read: WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!

The photograph, as usual, was signed ‘Strix’ and was reproduced, by arrangement, from a Sydney newspaper.

‘That, I imagine,’ said Alleyn, ‘will have torn it!’

‘So it seems. Look at this.’

It was a letter addressed to ‘The Head of Scotland Yard, London’ and written a week before the invitations to the Alleyns on heavy paper endorsed with an elaborate monogram: I.S. lavishly entwined with herbage. The envelope was bigger than the ones received by the Alleyns but of the same make and paper. The letter itself occupied two and a half pages, with a gigantic signature. It had been typed, Alleyn noticed, on a different machine. The address was Château Australasia, Sydney.

‘The Commissioner sent it down,’ said the AC. ‘You’d better read it.’

Alleyn did so. The typed section merely informed the recipient that the writer hoped to meet one of his staff, Mr Alleyn, at Waihoe Lodge, New Zealand, where Mr Alleyn’s wife was commissioned to paint the writer’s portrait. The writer gave the dates proposed. The recipient was of course aware of the outrageous persecution – ‘and so on along the already familiar lines. Her object in writing to him, she concluded, was because she hoped Mr Alleyn would be accorded full authority by the Yard to investigate this outrageous affair and she remained – ‘

‘Good God,’ said Alleyn quietly.

‘You’ve still got a postscript,’ the AC observed.

It was handwritten and all that might be expected. Points of exclamation proliferated. Underscorings doubled and trebled to an extent that would have made Queen Victoria’s correspondence appear by contrast a model of stony reticence. The subject matter lurched into incoherence but the general idea was to the effect that if the ‘Head of Scotland Yard’ didn’t do something pretty smartly he would have only himself to blame when the writer’s career came to a catastrophic halt. On her knees she remained distractedly and again in enormous calligraphy, sincerely, Isabella Sommita.

‘Expound,’ the AC invited with his head on one side. He was being whimsical. ‘Comment. Explain in your own words.’

‘I can only guess that the letter was typed by a secretary who advised moderation. The postscript seems to be all her own and written in a frenzy.’

‘Is Troy going to paint the lady? And do you propose to be absent without leave in the antipodes?’

Alleyn said: ‘We got our invitations this morning. I was about to decline, sir, when you rang up. Troy’s accepting.’

‘Is she?’ said the AC thoughtfully. ‘Is she, now? A good subject, um? To paint? What?’

‘Very,’ Alleyn said warily. What is he on about? he wondered.

‘Yes. Ah well,’ said the AC, freshening his voice with a suggestion of dismissal. Alleyn started to get up. ‘Hold on,’ said the AC. ‘Know anything about this man she lives with? Reece, isn’t it?’

‘No more than everyone knows.’

‘Strange coincidence, really,’ mused the AC.

‘Coincidence?’

‘Yes. The invitations. Troy going out there and all this.’ He flipped his finger at the papers on his desk. ‘All coming together as it were.’

‘Hardly a coincidence, sir, would you say? I mean, these dotty letters were all written with the same motive.’

‘Oh, I don’t mean them,’ said the AC contemptuously. ‘Or only in so far as they turn up at the same time as the other business.’

‘What other business?’ said Alleyn, and managed to keep the weary note out of his voice.

‘Didn’t I tell you? Stupid of me. Yes. There’s a bit of a flap going on in the international Drug Scene: the USA in particular. Interpol picked up a lead somewhere and passed it on to the French who talked to the FBI who’ve been talking to our lot. It seems there’s been some suggestion that the diva might be a big, big girl in the remotest background. Very nebulous it sounded to me but our Great White Chief is slightly excited.’ This was the AC’s habitual manner of alluding to the Commissioner. ‘He’s been talking to the Special Squad. And, by the way, to MI6.’

‘How do they come into it?’

‘Somewhere along the line. Cagey, as usual, I gather,’ said the AC. ‘But they did divulge that there was a leak from an anonymous source to the effect that the Sommita is thought to have operated in the past.’

‘What about Reece?’

‘Clean as a whistle, as far as is known.’

‘Montague Reece,’ Alleyn mused. ‘Almost too good to be true. Like something out of Trilby. Astrakhan coat-collar and glistening beard. Anything about his origin, sir?’

‘Thought to be American-Sicilian.’

During the pause that followed the AC hummed, uncertainly, the habañera from Carmen. ‘Ever heard her in that?’ he said. ‘Startling. Got the range – soprano, mezzo, you name it, got the looks, got the sex. Stick you like a pig for tuppence and make you like it.’ He shot one of his disconcerting glances at Alleyn. ‘Troy’ll have her hands full,’ he said. ‘What?’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn agreed, and with a strong foreboding of what was in store, added: ‘I don’t much fancy her going.’

‘Quite. Going to put your foot down, are you, Rory?’

Alleyn said: ‘As far as Troy’s concerned I haven’t got feet.’

‘Tell that to the Fraud Squad,’ said the AC and gave a slight whinny.

‘Not where her work’s concerned. It’s a must. For both of us.’

‘Ah,’ said the AC. ‘Mustn’t keep you,’ he said, and shifted without further notice into the tone that meant business. ‘It just occurs to me that in the circumstances you might, after all, take this trip. And by the way you know New Zealand, don’t you? Yes?’ And when Alleyn didn’t answer: ‘What I meant when I said “coincidence". The invitation and all that. Drops like a plum into our lap. We’re asked to keep a spot of very inconspicuous observation on this article and here’s the article’s boyfriend asking you to be his guest and Bob, so to speak, is your uncle. Incidentally, you’ll be keeping an eye on Troy and her termagant subject, won’t you? Well?’

Alleyn said: ‘Am I to take it, sir, that this is an order?’

‘I must say,’ dodged the AC, ‘I thought you would be delighted.’

‘I expect I ought to be.’

‘Very well, then,’ said the AC testily. ‘Why the hell aren’t you?’

‘Well, sir, you talked about coincidences. It so happens that by a preposterous series of them Troy has been mixed up to a greater and lesser degree in four of my cases. And – ‘

‘And by all accounts behaved quite splendidly. Hul-lo!’ said the AC. ‘That’s it, is it? You don’t like her getting involved?’

‘On general principles, no, I don’t.’

‘But, my dear man, you’re not going out to the antipodes to involve yourself in an investigation. You’re on observation. There won’t,’ said the AC, ‘as likely as not, be anything to observe. Except, of course, your most attractive wife. You’re not going to catch a murderer. You’re not going to catch anyone. What?’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘All right. It’s an order. You’d better ring your wife and tell her. Morning to you.’

III

In Melbourne all was well. The Sydney season had been a fantastic success artistically, financially and, as far as Isabella Sommita was concerned, personally. ‘Nothing to equal it had been experienced,’ as the press raved, ‘within living memory.’ One reporter laboriously joked that if cars were motivated by real instead of statistical horsepower the quadrupeds would undoubtedly have been unhitched and the diva drawn in triumph and by human propulsion through the seething multitudes.

There had been no further offensive photography.

Young Rupert Bartholomew had found himself pitchforked into a milieu that he neither understood nor criticized but in which he floundered in a state of complicated bliss and bewilderment. Isabella Sommita had caused him to play his one-act opera. She had listened with an approval that ripened quickly with the realization that the soprano role was, to put it coarsely, so large that the rest of the cast existed only as trimmings. The opera was about Ruth and the title was The Alien Corn. (’Corn,’ muttered Ben Ruby to Monty Reece, but not in the Sommita’s hearing, ‘is dead right.’) There were moments when the pink clouds amid which Rupert floated thinned and a small, ice-cold pellet ran down his spine and he wondered if his opera was any good. He told himself that to doubt it was to doubt the greatest soprano of the age and the pink clouds quickly reformed. But the shadow of unease did not absolutely leave him.

Mr Reece was not musical. Mr Ruby, in his own untutored way, was. Both accepted the advisability of consulting an expert and such was the pitch of the Sommita’s mounting determination to stage this piece that they treated the matter as one of top urgency. Mr Ruby, under pretence of wanting to study the work, borrowed it from the Sommita. He approached the doyen of Australian music critics, and begged him, for old times’ sake, to give his strictly private opinion on the opera. He did so and said that it stank.

‘Menotti-and-water,’ he said. ‘Don’t let her touch it.’

‘Will you tell her so?’ Mr Ruby pleaded.

‘Not on your Nelly,’ said the great man, and as an afterthought, ‘What’s the matter with her? Has she fallen in love with the composer?’

‘Boy,’ said Mr Ruby deeply, ‘you said it.’

It was true. After her somewhat tigerish fashion the Sommita was in love. Rupert’s Byronic appearance, his melting glance, and his undiluted adoration had combined to do the trick. At this point she had a flaring row with her Australian secretary who stood up to her and when she sacked him said she had taken the words out of his mouth. She then asked Rupert if he could type and when he said yes promptly offered him the job. He accepted, cancelled all pending appointments, and found himself booked in at the same astronomically expensive hotel as his employer. He not only dealt with her correspondence. He was one of her escorts to the theatre and was permitted to accompany her at her practices. He supped with her after the show and stayed longer than any of the other guests. He was in Heaven.

On a night when this routine had been observed and Mr Reece had retired early, in digestive discomfort, the Sommita asked Rupert to stay while she changed into something comfortable. This turned out to be a ruby silken negligée which may indeed have been comfortable for the wearer but which caused the beholder to shudder in an agony of excitement.

He hadn’t a hope. She had scarcely embarked upon the preliminary phases of her formidable techniques when she was in his arms, or more strictly, he in hers.

An hour later he floated down the long passage to his room, insanely inclined to sing at the top of his voice.

‘My first!’ he exulted. ‘My very first. And, incredibly – Isabella Sommita.’

He was, poor boy, as pleased as Punch with himself.

IV

As far as his nearest associates could discover Mr Reece was not profoundly disturbed by his mistress’s goings-on. Indeed he appeared to ignore them but, really, it was impossible to tell, he was so remarkably uncommunicative. Much of his time, most of it, in fact, was spent with a secretary, manipulating, it was widely conjectured, the Stock Markets and receiving long-distance telephone calls. His manner towards Rupert Bartholomew was precisely the same as his manner towards the rest of the Sommita’s following: so neutral that it could scarcely be called a manner at all. Occasionally when Rupert thought of Mr Reece he was troubled by stabs of uncomfortable speculation, but he was too far gone in incredulous rapture to be greatly concerned.

It was at this juncture that Mr Reece flew to New Zealand to inspect his island lodge, now completed.

On his return, three days later, to Melbourne, he found the Alleyns’ letters of acceptance and the Sommita in a high state of excitement.

‘Dar-leeng,’ she said, ‘you will show me everything. You have photographs, of course? Am I going to be pleased? Because I must tell you I have great plans. But such plans!’ cried the Sommita and made mysterious gestures. ‘You will never guess.’

‘What are they?’ he asked in his flat-voiced way.

‘Ah-ah!’ she teased. ‘You must be patient. First the pictures which Rupert, too, must see. Quick, quick, the pictures.’

She opened the bedroom door into the sitting room and in two glorious notes sang, ‘Rupert!’

Rupert had been coping with her fan mail. When he came in he found that Mr Reece had laid out a number of glossy coloured photographs on the bed. They were all of the island lodge.

The Sommita was enchanted. She exclaimed, purred, exulted. Several times she burst into laughter. Ben Ruby arrived and the photographs were re-exhibited. She embraced all three men severally and more or less together.

And then with a sudden drop into the practical she said, ‘The music room. Let me see it again. Yes. How big is it?’

‘From memory,’ said Mr Reece, ‘sixty feet long and forty wide.’ Mr Ruby whistled. ‘That’s quite a size,’ he remarked. ‘That’s more like a bijou theatre than a room. You settling to give concerts, honey?’

‘Better than that!’ she cried. ‘Didn’t I tell you, Monty my darleeng, that we have made plans. Ah, we have cooked up such plans, Rupert and I. Haven’t we, caro? Yes?’

‘Yes,’ Rupert said with an uncertain glance at Mr Reece. ‘I mean – Marvellous.’

Mr Reece had an extremely passive face but Rupert thought he detected a shade of resignation pass over it. Mr Ruby, however, wore an expression of the deepest apprehension.

The Sommita flung her right arm magnificently across Rupert’s shoulders. ‘This dear child,’ she said and if she had made it: ‘this adorable lover’ she could have scarcely been more explicit, ‘has genius. I tell you – I who know. Genius.’ They said nothing and she continued. ‘I have lived with his opera. I have studied his opera. I have studied the leading role. The “Ruth". The arias, the solos, the duets – there are two – and the ensembles. All, but all, have the unmistakable stigmata of genius. I do not,’ she amended, ‘use the word “stigmata” in the sense of martyrdom. Better, perhaps, to say “they bear the banner of genius". Genius!’ she shouted.

To look at Rupert at this moment one might have thought that ‘martyrdom’ was, after all, the more appropriate word. His face was dark red and he shifted in her embrace. She shook him, none too gently. ‘Clever, clever one,’ she said and kissed him noisily.

‘Are we to hear your plan?’ Mr Reece asked.

The hour being seven o’clock she hustled them into the sitting room and told Rupert to produce cocktails. He was glad to secrete himself in the chilly cabinet provided for drinks, ice and glasses. A few desultory and inaudible remarks came from the other three. Mr Ruby cleared his throat once or twice. Then, so unexpectedly that Rupert spilt Mr Reece’s whisky and soda over his hands, the piano in the sitting room sketched the opening statement of what he had hoped would be the big aria from his opera: and the superb voice, in heart-rending pianissimo, sang: ‘Alone, alone amidst the alien corn.’

It was at that moment with no warning at all that Rupert was visited by a catastrophic certainty. He had been mistaken in his opera. Not even the most glorious voice in all the world could ever make it anything but what it was – third rate.

It’s no good, he thought. It is ridiculously commonplace. And then: She has no judgement. She is not a musical woman.

He was shattered.

CHAPTER 2 The Lodge

Early on a fine morning in the antipodean spring the Alleyns were met at their New Zealand airport by a predictably rich car and were driven along roads that might have been ruled across the plains to vanishing points on the horizon. The Pacific was out of sight somewhere to their left and before them rose foothills. These were the outer ramparts of the Southern Alps.

‘We’re in luck,’ Alleyn said. ‘On a grey day when there are no hills to be seen, the plains can be deadly. Would you want to paint?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Troy said after considering it. ‘It’s all a bit inhuman, isn’t it? One would have to find an idiom. I get the feeling that the people only move across the surface. They haven’t evolved with it. They’re not included,’ said Troy, ‘in the anatomy. What cheek!’ she exclaimed, ‘to generalize when I’ve scarcely arrived in the country.’

The driver, who was called Bert, was friendly and anxious for his passengers to be impressed. He pointed out mountains that had been sheep-farmed by the first landholders.

‘Where we’re going,’ Troy asked, ‘to Waihoe Lodge – is that sheep country?’

‘No way. We’re going into Westland, Mrs Alleyn. The West Coast. It’s all timber and mining over there. Waihoe’s quite a lake. And the Lodge! You know what they reckon it’s cost him? Half a million. And more. That’s what they reckon. Nothing like it anywhere else in N’yerzillun. You’ll be surprised.’

‘We’ve heard about it,’ Alleyn said.

‘Yeah? You’ll still be surprised.’ He slewed his head towards Troy. ‘You’ll be the painting lady,’ he said. ‘Mr Reece reckoned you might get the fancy to take a picture up at the head of the Pass. Where we have lunch.’

‘I don’t think that’s likely,’ Troy said.

‘You’re going to paint the famous lady: is that right?’

His manner was sardonic. Troy said yes, she was.

‘Rather you than me,’ said the driver.

‘Do you paint, then?’

‘Me? Not likely. I wouldn’t have the patience.’

‘It takes a bit more than patience,’ Alleyn said mildly.

‘Yeah? That might be right, too,’ the driver conceded. There was a longish pause. ‘Would she have to keep still, then?’ he asked.

‘More or less.’

‘I reckon it’ll be more “less” than “more",’ said the driver. ‘They tell me she’s quite a celebrity,’ he added.

‘Worldwide,’ said Alleyn.

‘What they reckon. Yeah,’ said the driver with a reflective chuckle, ‘they can keep it for mine. Temperamental! You can call it that if you like.’ He whistled. ‘If it’s not one thing it’s another. Take the dog. She had one of these fancy hound things, white with droopy hair. The boss give it to her. Well, it goes crook and they get a vet and he reckons it’s hopeless and it ought to be put out of its misery. So she goes crook. Screechin’ and moanin’, something remarkable. In the finish the boss says get it over with, so me and the vet take it into the hangar and he chloroforms it and then gives it an injection and we bury it out of sight. Cripes!’ said the driver. ‘When they told her you’d of thought they’d committed a murder.’ He sucked his teeth reminiscently.

‘Maria,’ he said presently, ‘that’s her personal help or maid or whatever it’s called – she was saying there’s been some sort of a schemozzle over in Aussie with the papers. But you’ll know about that, Mr Alleyn. Maria reckons you’ve taken on this situation. Is that right?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Alleyn. Troy gave him a good nudge.

‘What she reckons. You being a detective. ‘Course Maria’s a foreigner. Italian,’ said the driver. ‘You can’t depend on it with that mob. They get excited.’

‘You’re quartered there, are you? At the Lodge?’

‘This is right. For the duration. When they pack it in there’ll only be a caretaker and his family on the island. Monty Reece has built a garage and boathouse on the lake shore and his launch takes you over to the Lodge. He’s got his own chopper, mind. No trouble. Ring through when required.’

The conversation died. Troy wondered if the driver called his employer ‘Monty Reece’ to his face and decided that quite possibly he did.

The road across the plains mounted imperceptibly for forty miles and a look backward established their height. Presently they stared down into a wide riverbed laced with milky-turquoise streaks.

At noon they reached the top where they lunched from a hamper with wine in a chiller-kit. Their escort had strong tea from a Thermos flask. ‘Seeing I’m the driver,’ he said, ‘and seeing there’s the Zig-Zag yet to come.’ He was moved to entertain them with stories about fatal accidents in the gorge.

The air up here was wonderfully fresh and smelt aromatically of manuka scrub patching warm tussocky earth. They were closer now to perpetual snow.

‘We better be moving,’ said the driver. ‘You’ll notice a big difference when we go over the head of the Pass. Kind of sudden.’

There was a weathered notice at the top: CORNISHMAN’S PASS. 1000 METRES.

The road ran flat for a short distance and then dived into a new world. As the driver had said: it was sudden. So sudden, so new and so dramatic that for long afterwards Troy would feel there had been a consonance between this moment and the events that were to follow, as if, on crossing over the Pass, they entered a region that was prepared and waiting.

It was a world of very dark rain forest that followed, like velvet, the convolutions of the body it enfolded. Here and there waterfalls glinted. Presiding over the forests, snow-tops caught the sun, but down below the sun never reached and there, thread-like in its gorge, a river thundered. ‘You can just hear ‘er,’ said the driver who had stopped the car.

But all they heard at first was birdsong – cool statements, incomparably wild. After a moment Troy said she thought she could hear the river. The driver suggested they go to the edge and look down. Troy suffered horridly from height-vertigo but went, clinging to Alleyn’s arm. She looked down once as if from a gallery in a theatre on an audience of treetops, and saw the river.

The driver, ever-informative, said that you could make out the roof of a car that six years ago went over from where they stood. Alleyn said, ‘So you can,’ put his arm round his wife and returned her to the car.